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Kim Hee-ae was born in 1967 in Jeju City, and her family later moved to Seoul.

Kim was a freshman at Hyehwa Girls' High School when she was discovered by the younger brother of one of her teachers; he had been visiting the school by chance and worked for an advertising agency. This led to her first modeling job in a commercial for a school uniform brand in 1978.

In 1983, Kim made her acting debut in the film The First Day of the Twentieth Year. While studying at Chung-Ang University as a Theater and Film major, she appeared in her first television drama on KBS in 1986. Over the next decade, she would go on to have a successful career on Korean television, alongside fellow top actresses Chae Shi-ra and Ha Hee-ra. Among her most significant dramas during this period were Beyond the Mountains (1991) and Sons and Daughters (1992), for which she won the highest award at the MBC Drama Awards and the Baeksang Arts Awards, called the Daesang ("Grand Prize").

She again drew praise in 2003 for two consecutive hit dramas. In Wife, her husband vanishes and reappears years later as an amnesiac with another family, while in Perfect Love (written by Kim Soo-hyun), her role as the perfect wife and mother who gets diagnosed with a terminal illness earned her another Daesang from the Baeksang Arts Awards.[1][2] She worked again with Kim a year later in Precious Family (also known as Letters to My Parents), playing a woman who marries into a rich family who treats her badly after she gives birth to a baby with autism.[3]

Her third collaboration with Kim Soo-hyun was 2007's My Husband's Woman, but unlike her previous saintly characters, this time she was cast against type as a sexy, worldly woman having an affair with her best friend's husband.[4][5] The adultery drama was a hit with a peak viewership rating of 38.7%, and Kim yet again won the Daesang at the Korea Drama Awards and the SBS Drama Awards.[6]

Afterwards Kim went on a brief hiatus, during which she continued to appear in commercials and magazines, gaining a reputation as a style icon for Korean middle-aged women (called "ajumma") by inspiring them to wear younger and edgier clothes.[7] Kim returned to acting four years later with Midas, in the role of a wealthy chaebol heiress who fosters greed and ambition in a young lawyer.[8] She then won Best Actress at the Baeksang Arts Awards for her portrayal of a housewife obsessed with her children's education who finds herself falling for the professor next door in A Wife's Credentials, one of the inaugural dramas in 2012 of new cable channel jTBC.[9][10]

In 2014, Kim returned to the big screen after a 21-year absence in Elegant Lies, a film adaptation of Kim Ryeo-ryeong's novel about teen bullying which leads to a young girl's suicide.[14] Kim said she accepted the project because the script was "faultless" and she felt empathy for the characters,[15][16] and one review described her performance as "excellent as the grieving mother [...] understated but somehow believable, touching and honest."[17]

Shortly after, Kim reunited with the writer and director of A Wife's Credentials in Secret Love Affair, about an art foundation director who embarks on a passionate affair with a poor but talented pianist 20 years her junior.[18][19]

She next played the muse of real-life folk music group Twin Folio in the 2015 film C'est Si Bon, named after a music lounge located in Myeong-dong which was famous in the 1970s and 1980s for its live performances.[20]